Yeah and I don’t think it’s quantity so much as quality. I think they’ll be looking to get the big guns and the most ambitious and creative minds at smaller studios that can do something new and bold.
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I don’t think AT&T is interested in selling WB anymore. Looking at their rhetoric they are probably going Sony’s route where they will try to bind gaming IPs with movies and movie IPs with games.
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70 studios is not needed, Microsoft only needs 45 to 50 studios to see thier vision through to secure the W. If they branch out to more it’s a defensive option.
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They are at 23 now studios now. How many studios do Sega and WB have? Whatever that number is then that is how many more they should acquire 
Aside from the obvious devs from the Sega umbrella (Sega/Vanillaware/Atlus) I would like to see an exclusive deal with Falcom. And I am playing Blue Dragon right now and loving it, I wonder if that Artoon team was disbanded or if they are working together under a new company.
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How much extra would it to be to buy just the video game rights from WB? Like an extra 4 billion to buy only the video game rights to DC, LOTR, and HP.
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Artoon was under AQ Interactive which merged with Marvelous Entertainment and Liveware to form Marvelous: Marvelous (company) - Wikipedia
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Since WB Games chat is back. WB Games is absolutely off the table lately with how ridiculously high WarnerMedia’s board is over the new Mortal Kombat film (They expect it do really good numbers in theaters and HBO Max now) and the Hollywood trades are high on that film as well. The gaming unit has five absolute slam dunk hits in Back 4 Blood, Lego Star Wars Complete Saga, Gotham Knights, Suicide Squad and Hogwarts in the next few quarters along with Mortal Kombat 11’s evergreen performance since 2019.
It’s a perfect relaunch line up for the publisher. When you have that loaded a line up that synergises with other units perfectly. Which is a goal for CEO Jason Kilar who apparently killed the gaming unit sale talks after he was appointed as new CEO because he sees the gaming unit as a cornerstone of their “Digital Portfolio”. And if Back 4 Blood is a hit I wouldn’t be surprised they buy Turtle Rock and add them as well.
I’d consider that door closed, come back in 2025 when it might open again.
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I agree with you on everything except about them buying turtle studios. Warner brothers parent company AT&T right now is on a mountain of debt and their profits are lowering with each quarter. Right now their focus is managing their $150 billion debt (more than half of their stock value) rather than doing acquisitions and are selling portions of their company to get that money. For example, crunchy roll and their TV business. I wouldn’t be surprised if they go bust and everyone starts buying pieces of the company.
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At, the lower end… I honestly can see about 30 or so studios being enough to provided consistent, first party content once they are all running at full capacity. meaning they are able to put 8 or so triple AAA games on a yearly basis.
On the topic of acquisitions, I want to talk briefly about Ninja Theory. It looks like the deal with Bleeding Edge was Microsoft was going to give them a financial infusion to bring this ‘passion project’ to market without any intentions of making it a great game or supporting it to make it a great game. Is this just a cynical ploy by Phil Spencer to keep the ‘talent happy’ at NT, or just good sense? Meaning, are the devs happy enough about the money they got to bring the game to market, but not enough to make it great like Sea of Thieves?
Meaning in the big picture, Microsoft has to let their studies have an occasional dud like BE to keep the talent happy and producing the vaunted AAA titles they really want.
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I don’t know that more time and money would ever make Bleeding Edge the success that Sea of Thieves was. It’s a pretty simple beat em up.
I think its just a bad look to purchase the company and come in and start canceling their projects. It goes against their hands off approach. You see the same thing with Obsidian and Grounded.
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Paying third party is a part of the strategy with a yearly budget and will continue happening. But building a world leading first party is where they want to be. Acquisitions will happen this year and next.
Discord acquisition would be amazing. I so badly want that to happen as a PC gamer.
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Ninja Theory never really showed any interest in improving Bleeding Edge or incorporating any feedback that was said about the game since the beta. Flop of a project and you move on.
Truly the only game I can say that was proper gamepass fodder lol.
One wonders if BE was an internal pandering to certain devs instead of something the higher ups ever wanted. So maybe the NT VP told Phil Spencer that ‘psst just give em 2 million to finish the game and they’ll be happy’. Seems like an indictment on the culture of NT, since Phil was hands off.
You reading too much into that.
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Am I? I think there is more than meets the eye on this project. There was a lot of discussion in late 2019 about certain political influences behind the making of this game, rather than worry about the actual playability of it.
What? Lol
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Oh brother
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Bleeding Edge was in production before MS offered to buy them. They simply let them finish it.
It launched on Gamepass with 10 million free copies. If it can’t succeed when its free it wasn’t going to as a paid only game.
Swings and roundabouts. Obsidians GROUNDED was the same and successful.
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